By Communications staff, College of Arts and Sciences
Jordan Thompson, PhD candidate in the Department of Anthropology, won the R.E. Taylor Poster Award at the 2026 Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The award acknowledges innovative student contributions to archaeological research through the use of scientific methods, and has enhanced the careers of prominent young scholars and professionals for more than two decades.
Thompson was awarded the R.E. Taylor Poster Award for “Reexamining the Weitas Creek Site (10CW30): An Early Nimiipuu Hunting Camp”, a reanalysis of the site through conventional archaeological methods and a collaborative, community-engaged framework.
“Our fieldwork has demonstrated that the North Fork of the Clearwater River was occupied repeatedly throughout the early Holocene, supported by dates of 12,000-10,000 years ago associated with early stone technology,” said Thompson. “It indicates that people had a deep-time knowledge of the landscape and resources in the region, demonstrating a strong connection to the Bitterroot Mountain uplands from the earliest occupations, and that the traditional seasonal subsistence cycle of the Plateau peoples existed from a very early time period.”
Thompson is working on several papers based on her dissertation and associated research, addressing topics like technological organization, raw material sourcing, and ethnogeological approaches to archaeology.
“My goal is to contribute to a more collaborative and inclusive model of archaeological practice, one that combines rigorous scientific research with ethical community engagement,” said Thompson. “By integrating Indigenous perspectives and Ways of Knowing, this work represents not only a methodological contribution to archaeology, but also an effort to rethink how archaeological interpretations are constructed through collaborative and community-engaged approaches.”
Congratulations on the accomplishment, Jordan!